ONVIF camera list empty when installing new camera

ptzguy

Getting the hang of it
Aug 11, 2016
94
81
I've been using BI for about 5 years. I have 20+ POE cameras of various types and everything has been very stable for several years. I add or upgrade about 2 new cameras a year.

Recently I bought a new 4K noname turret camera from Amazon. I have another identical camera and its been running for months with no problems.

I always find the new IP by using the Find/Inspect feature with ONVIF discovery. Now, I just get a blank list. Refresh does not help. I can see a list of IP addresses if I use the LAN IP: port scan option, but there are so many devices on the network that it's hard to know which one is the new camera. All of my cameras are set to Static IP.

I recently replaced my Windows 10 server with a new faster server running Windows 11 Pro. I suspect that the problem has something to do with that change. Everything else seems to be working fine. I can see all of the previous cameras, switch between views, use UI3 from multiple laptops, etc.

Usually, I can figure these things out, but this one has me stumped. Any help is appreciated.

I probably can work around the problem by using separate IP scanner software, but I'd like to understand why I can't find the IP using BI.
 
Best practice has always been to type in the IP address of the camera and the username and password and then hit find/inspect to find the proper protocol for the camera.

And since you made the IP static, you know the IP address.

In some instances the find/inspect would populate a list for some people or would show some of the cameras but not all, just like the zoom/focus features in BI works for some varifocals and not all. I suspect the feature stopped/will stop working as BI tries to tie the camera to the MAC address feature that has burned some people.
 
Best practice has always been to type in the IP address of the camera and the username and password and then hit find/inspect to find the proper protocol for the camera.

And since you made the IP static, you know the IP address.

In some instances the find/inspect would populate a list for some people or would show some of the cameras but not all, just like the zoom/focus features in BI works for some varifocals and not all. I suspect the feature stopped/will stop working as BI tries to tie the camera to the MAC address feature that has burned some people.
 
All of the cameras I've bought for the last few years have been ONVIF compatible. I just leave them as ONVIF in BI. I have some older cams that are pre-ONVIF. I use cam-specific protocols for them.

I meant that I always set my cameras to static once they're defined in BI.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Flintstone61
I've been using BI for about 5 years. I have 20+ POE cameras of various types and everything has been very stable for several years. I add or upgrade about 2 new cameras a year.

Recently I bought a new 4K noname turret camera from Amazon. I have another identical camera and its been running for months with no problems.

I always find the new IP by using the Find/Inspect feature with ONVIF discovery. Now, I just get a blank list. Refresh does not help. I can see a list of IP addresses if I use the LAN IP: port scan option, but there are so many devices on the network that it's hard to know which one is the new camera. All of my cameras are set to Static IP.

I recently replaced my Windows 10 server with a new faster server running Windows 11 Pro. I suspect that the problem has something to do with that change. Everything else seems to be working fine. I can see all of the previous cameras, switch between views, use UI3 from multiple laptops, etc.

Usually, I can figure these things out, but this one has me stumped. Any help is appreciated.

I probably can work around the problem by using separate IP scanner software, but I'd like to understand why I can't find the IP using BI.
OK, problem solved. As I suspected, it was related to converting from an older Win 10 server to a newer Win 11 server.

Here's what I found: all of my (20+) cameras are hardwired POE. Most of them plug directly into a 48 port 100 MBS Cisco switch. A few PTZ cams require POE+; they plug into a small POE+ switch that's daisy-chained to the Cisco switch.

In addition to the 48 100MBS POE ports, the Cisco switch has four GB optical ports for fiber backbone connections. Years ago, when I was setting things up, I bought some adapters that plug into the optical ports so that standard Cat6E cables can be connected to them. I used one of these ports to connect between the Cisco switch and the main Verizon Fios router that connects to the Internet.

In the heat of battle, swapping the servers, instead of plugging the Fios router into the GB optical port, I plugged it into one of the standard 100 MB POE ports. This worked OK (sort of) so I didn't identify the problem at first. All 24 cameras came up and seemed normal, although I was noticing occasional alerts from UI3 of "network congestion" - the little orange clock that shows up at the top right corner of the screen.

But the real mystery was this: when I tried to add a new 4K camera that I was evaluating, BI would not "automatically" find the IP for the new camera. When you add a new ONVIF-compatible camera (and nearly all of the new cameras are ONVIF-compatible) you can leave the IP blank in the BI Add Camera screen. BI will then list all of the existing camera IPs and some other info. If you have less than 10 cameras, the new camera usually will be immediately obvious. Just click on it and BI will add its IP automatically.

However, if you have a lot of cameras, (currently 28 on my system), the new camera may be hidden in the crowd. By looking carefully at parameters such as IP address, vendor name, camera name assigned in BI, etc. you can usually pick out the new camera. Then just click on it and it and BI adds it. From there, the camera comes up for viewing and its just a matter of fine-tuning it to the system.

In this case, however, the automatic list of ONVIF cameras was completely blank. If I selected the alternate list by IP, I would get a list, but it was very hard to pick out the new camera from the long list.

The Solution: Once I moved the connection to the Verizon Router to the GB optical port, the ONVIF list appeared normally. Then it was easy to pick out the new camera and configure it.

Why did this happen? Apparently the standard 100 MBS port was barely enough for most of the data to pass through as long as the network was lightly loaded. Any extra load, such as trying to get a list of ONVIF cameras, overloaded the 100 MBS port, leaving the list blank. Also I had noticed that any operation that heavily loaded the system, such as Timeline View, would generate Network Delay signals in UI3.
 
Last edited:
Even though theoretically the cameras only use small bandwidth, I have found the 100 Mbps switches struggling with passing data AND streaming 10-12 cams. I was pulling my hair out when camera GUI's would stall or freeze.

So I went POE Gigabit switches for my cams.
Glad you figured it out. Murphy's Law manifests itself in many ways.
 
Last edited:
I run my cams at 5-6 FPS up to 10 FPS for important areas. I find that's plenty for security ID work - like getting 5-10 photos per second that I can step through, email to the police or neighborhood watch. I'm also using VBR (variable bit rate) on nearly all of the cams now. Most of the time, the server is coasting at 10-15% CPU
 
I'm running 11 cams and the stream is averaging 7800-8100 kB/sec
Went to a conversion table and 8000 Kb/s = 64Mbps.
if you were to calculate Ethernet overhead for the data it could from 5-10% or higher.
From what little i've read, 20%-30% of a buffer is recommended for stability and performance.
So for my stream of 64Mbps, 20-30% would = about 80ish Mbps. and on a 100Mbps switch
with an NVR and a BI machine on the network, you could say the cameras are sending data packets to both Ip addresses.
Likely exceeding the comfortable buffer, and what probably caused my network lag.

Went away when i switched to 1000Mbps switch.
my BI server is fluctuating between 6% and 12% depending on load. streaming about 8000 kB/s .